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Katherine Grant Samples In The Wide Open Light with Guest Host Andrea Jenelle
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Katherine Grant: Welcome to the historical romance sampler podcast. I'm your host, Katherine Grant, and each week I introduce you to another amazing historical romance author. My guest reads a little sample of their work, and then we move into a free ranging interview. If you like these episodes, don't forget to subscribe to the historical romance sampler, wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Now let's get into this week's episode. All right. I am here this week for a very special episode celebrating my latest release in the wide open light. And to help me celebrate is guest host Andrea Jenelle. We first heard from Andrea in April when she was telling us about Spine of Steel, which is the first book in the suffragette Uprising series.
And now Andrea is joining me as guest host because in the Wide open light is [00:01:00] book two in that series. Andrea, thank you so much for being my guest host.
Andrea Jenelle: Thank you so much. I can't wait to hear you read an excerpt.
Katherine Grant: Yes. So the Suffragette Uprising series is an interconnected series of stories that focus on women fighting for their rights across various eras.
So Andrea's story, spine of Steel, took place in the Victorian American period. I guess maybe we could call that like post Civil War America. And when you first put out this prompt for Suffragette Uprising, I was kind of like, I write Regency, how would I do this?
And my first reaction was, no. And then I was on a train and I remember looking out the train window, just thinking like, how would I make this happen? And all of a sudden I was like, I've always wanted to write about Peterloo. Is this my chance? And I went home and I Googled women at Peterloo, and it turned [00:02:00] out there were many scholarly articles because they played a huge role at the Peterloo massacre, which I can talk about more later. But that is the framing for this story. It is a Northfield Hall novella as well, which means that my characters live and work at the estate that I invented called Northfield Hall. And so Julia is the wife who lives at Northfield Hall. She arranged their family life at Northfield Hall.
Samuel is her husband. They've been married for a long time, but they were separated for 11 years of that marriage because he was press ganged into the Navy and was fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. Now he's been back, they've expanded their family and Julia has said, I want to go to Manchester because there's a really big speech and I wanna be a part of this movement.
And so this scene is the day before, actually, it's the morning that she leaves and it's from Samuel's point of view. And we see how he's kind of processing the fact that Julia is going [00:03:00] off to Manchester.
The morning Julia would leave him, samuel woke before the babies. He broke free from a nightmare, the usual one about being trapped beneath a cannon while the ship caught fire and sink faster and faster into the cold Mediterranean sea. Sometimes his fearful moans woke julia. But this morning she snored on beside him, her lips curled in something that resembled a smile.
She was looking forward to her time away. He didn't know what to make of their tryst the previous evening. Ordinarily, that was the type of thing he tried not to think too hard about. If his wife wanted to make love to him, then who was he to second guess it? But Samuel wished it had felt more like lovemaking and less like a tourniquet on the wound bleeding between them.
Julia had not stopped to listen to his concerns. And had he given her a fair shot? Samuel now couldn't remember what they had [00:04:00] discussed. His only memory from the conversation was of the emotions that had swept over him and which hovered somewhere in the same corner of his soul as that blasted nightmare.
Whatever they had said last night, julia was still leaving in a matter of hours, even though he wished it weren't. So Samuel had to resign himself to fate. Well, he had done that plenty of times throughout his life, and this time it was temporary, Julia was leaving for a fortnight. Surely he could handle that far better than when he had truly awoken in a nightmare on HMS Scipion and discovered he would spend the rest of his life without a left calf.
He started the long process of easing out of bed. The first step was to find his peg in the dark. He groped along the wall where it was supposed to be. Nothing. He bent farther, bracing himself against the mattress, and felt around on the floor. Finally, [00:05:00] when he had almost fallen off the bed, he found it nestled against the baseboard of the wall and arms reach away where it had apparently rolled overnight.
Fine. Even with Julia in bed beside him, he didn't need her help to get his unruly peg in order. Now sitting up, he reached into the little wooden chest beside the bed that held his leather strap and salve. The strap kept his peg leg in place all day. The salve kept the strap from rubbing his thigh raw.
Ordinarily, he looked at these little instruments of his day and felt nothing. This morning rage bubbled up old rage. Rage that had been born the day the press gang punched him to the ground in Liverpool before marching him to Old Glory. What had Samuel done to earn that? Why had he been born to lose his liberty, lose his leg, lose his life as he knew it when other men were
were born to eat roast beef every day off golden [00:06:00] plates? Why was his wife abandoning him for a bigger dream when all the other wives of Northfield Hall were remaining with their husbands? A stupid, selfish, petty rage to give into. Samuel threw down the strap and disgust. He knew better than to let such emotions breathe.
He would not turn into one of those bitter old men who had nothing to do except rail against every unfair turn of life. He had a family of adorable children. He had a wife who was smarter than anyone he knew, who had once seen him across a church service and deemed him worthy, and who would come back to him after she finished her mission in Manchester.
Startling back to reality, he discovered Julia was awake and curling her warm body around the curve of his back. "Do you need help?" Her voice was tender and raw from sleep. Samuel hadn't meant to wake her up and if she had to awaken, [00:07:00] he wished it wasn't now when he was least like the man she had married.
"No," he said trying to push her away. "Go back to sleep." Julia draped her legs around either side of him from behind and took the pot of salve from his hand. "Let me." She was so warm at his back, even though the day would be hot, the bedroom was cool and his wife's body comforted him. The rage subsided like a wave retreating from the beach.
He watched Julia's fingers dip into the salve. She warmed it between her two palms before bringing her hands to his leg, leaning around him now still with her legs spread around his back. She soothed the salve into his bare thigh with gentle practiced strokes. She eased the lotion onto his stump too, and lingered there, caressing it with all the love in the world.
Samuel had been so ashamed for her to see it. When he first came to Northfield Hall for a whole year, he had refused to disrobe [00:08:00] in front of her, much less, let her see him minister to his leg. Even now, the rage inside him hated that she was touching it, but Samuel had learned not to listen to it. He had resigned himself to this fate, which meant he could welcome his wife's touch.
"Do you promise you'll take good care of this old thing while I'm gone?" Julia asked, her cheek rested lazily against his shoulder, and the movement of her lips rustled his night shirt. "I won't fall apart without you." "Good." Her fingers, no longer slick with salve, wandered faster now away from his injury and up towards his groin.
"What about this old thing? Will you take care of it too while I'm gone?" But Samuel caught her wrist before she reached his Roger. He didn't want that. Not right now. If they were going to be awake together, he wanted to actually say something, not erase all hope of words with another confusing roll on the mattress.[00:09:00]
"I want to give you something, Jules." Her eyes dark in the dawning light widened with surprise. "You don't need to be spending any money on me." "I didn't." Not releasing her wrist, samuel reached under his pillow with his other hand and retrieved his locket. He tucked it into her palm. "I want you to have this." Julia's fingers tightened around it before she could even look at it. "But it's yours."
Samuel had done his best to clean it up. He had polished the brass and put some oil on the tiny hinges, but from looking at it, a person could see the difficult life it had led. Its cover was scratched, tarnished, and a little dented. Inside, the miniature oil painting had suffered a water stain from the 1811 hurricane that soaked Samuel's entire sea chest. To Samuel's eyes,
it was still beautiful. "For all those years, this was the sum total of what I had of you, a tiny little painting done by an artist who never met [00:10:00] you, made from the description I gave her." Samuel had been on shore leave in Cadiz, hadn't seen so much as the English channel for four years, and the miniature artist had been rushing through paintings to service all the homesick sailors.
"What does your wife look like?" The artist had asked and stilted English. Samuel had pictured Julia's face as if she were right there before him. Smiling, eager, vigorous. But how did he put that into words? How did he make the painter catch the correct angle of her nose, which was neither straight nor crooked?
How did he explain the exact distance between her eyes and how her irises were such a fleck brown, that they were almost honey? How did he describe the soft sweep of her lips and the way they were always one joke away from an easy smile?
"It's not a perfect portrait of you," he said to Julia with a chuckle. The woman in the locket had jet black hair instead of the light mud color of Julia's, and she didn't smile at all as she [00:11:00] stared out of the locket, her lips, instead, a firm pink line. But her eyes, how they shone, even though they were composed of the tiniest dots of oil paint.
Her hair though too dark, sprang in magical curls across the small canvas, just as it did in real life. And most of all, the artist had somehow managed to capture Julia's essence in her posture, full of hope, full of plans, full of an unwillingness to let life dictate its terms to her. As if the portrait of Julia was running off to find Samuel in real life. "If a stranger had only this likeness to go off, they might not find you,"
samuel continued. "Especially now that my hair is mostly gray." He reached out and threaded his fingers through the mess of hair that had his escaped from beneath her night cap. Then he pointed to the locket. "Do you know how I described you to the artist? What made her paint you like this?" Julia's lips twitched. "Stubborn and willful?"
"A woman who shapes the world around [00:12:00] her, who doesn't let fate sweep her one way or another, who is so intelligent that when she doesn't know something, she knows the questions to ask to find it out." And he paused. Remembering how the miniaturist had stared at him, trying to make sense of his descriptions.
"A woman whom I love more deeply than I ever thought possible." Julia wrapped her fingers around his. They were smooth from the salve, warm and strong. "Why are you giving this to me?" "I want you to take it with you. I want you to remember..." he cleared his throat. This type of talk was difficult, awkward, and his instincts surged forward to try to steer him away from speaking his heart
so clearly. He stayed the course "...that I love you, this version of you as well as the version of you that is my wife and the mother of my children. I wish that you weren't called to join this fight. But I love that you always do what is right." He [00:13:00] waited, watching her examine the locket again, memorizing the curve of her lips as she smiled down
at his token. He hoped she might say something in return about how much she loved him. Perhaps she would even promise him that nothing would ever come between them. She said no such words, but it was enough for him that she took the locket and that, on this last morning they had together, she kissed him on the lips and whispered she would never forget.
Andrea Jenelle: Beautiful. Thank you.
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Head on over to the Historical Romance Sampler link tree to learn [00:14:00] more.
Andrea Jenelle: I had the privilege of, reading of doing a beta read of this novella. And one of the things that really struck me is is how poignantly you portray the dynamics of a marriage and, and the communication that happens in a marriage. Can you do you kind of talk to us a little bit about what inspired that?
I don't think I've ever read and I've read a lot of historical romance. I don't think I've ever read like such a realistic depiction depiction of how that changes the longer you're in a marriage.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, I think I. I think it's something that I, as a reader, am always interested in. At the end of a story, I, I really like to know how does their relationship change and epilogues tend to show us a rosy picture.
Mm-hmm. But I, you know, I've always been interested, well, what does that look like? How do you love someone but [00:15:00] also, you know, be in a very long relationship and have days where you don't like them. That's always something that I'm just like, how does that work? So I think part of my inspiration is that I've always been interested in that.
And then I'm married. I've been with my husband 10 years. A few years ago he was going through some really intense mental health struggles, and we were not having big conflict or anything like that. We just both kind of recognized that we were having trouble supporting each other through this really
big thing that he was going through. And so we did some couples therapy, which was fantastic. I highly recommend couples therapy when you don't think you need it because it helps you not need it at the end. Right, right. But I think that really tuned the fiction writer part of me into, oh, the therapist is noticing all these tiny dynamics.
And some of it was as simple as we did an exercise where she asked him, , [00:16:00] okay, when he's feeling upset, how do you comfort him physically? Like do you touch him? Do you hug him? Whatever. And I started like rubbing his arm. That's what I do as kind of like petting a dog or something.
And then she asked him how he felt and he said he really doesn't like being rubbed that way. He wants to be touched with just like a still palm. And then we flipped that. And she prompted him to put his hand at the back of my head, which he had really liked. And I was like, that's terrible.
Do not do that to me. And so that clued me into the fact that everyone has these very different reactions and ways that we communicate and ways that we get comforted and it's all so minute and yet it makes such a big difference because when we did this therapy focusing in on these really tiny things, it shifted our relationship, it made it stronger, it made it so that we could communicate better.
And so I think that was where I started being like [00:17:00] really creatively inspired and interested in that. And yeah, I mean I also think there are a lot of romance readers who are also in long-term relationships.
Yes. Or have that life experience. And so love does not end when you commit to somebody. It needs a lot more than that.
Andrea Jenelle: And my husband and I have been together 27 years, so Congratulations. Thank you. So
Katherine Grant: it's, yeah, so, so I hope that readers are, feel, seen or feel that it's, you know, adding a layer to romance.
Andrea Jenelle: Very much so. I mean, I definitely felt seen and as I said, like, you know, that's something you don't see a lot right at all in the romance genre period, not just, not just, not just historical, you don't see a contemporary either, really. Yeah. I think there's, I think I've only read one contemporary book that was like that and it was one by Chloe Lees.
But so that struck me. The other, the other thing, I know we've talked about this before, but do you [00:18:00] just wanna talk about how different it is to center your characters in the working class or the rising middle class as opposed to writing about nobility? And why you chose to do that and what, what you, what additional things you think it brings to the reader.
Katherine Grant: So I started writing some working class characters as my Northfield Hall novellas, which are a spinoff from the Prestons. So I have this established nobility that I write about, and then these are the people who live and work on their estate and, it is slightly different and it, it's also funny to go between them because like you're like changing your worldview.
But I think one thing is comfort that you can give the characters, especially writing this book, which is tackling labor rights and the franchise, and this is 1819, the industrial revolution has been going on long enough, maybe like 50 years. Mm-hmm. That there are [00:19:00] factories, there are children, there's already backlash to children in factories.
There are all sorts of. There's such poverty in Britain at this time. So when you're writing working class, you have to engage with that, even if your characters are miraculously not impoverished, which my characters at Northfield Hall, the whole concept of Northfield Hall is anyone who works there they live off the land.
They make their own linens, and they also get a share of the profits of the estate, which it's not that profitable, but they're getting more money than the average person, right? So they're living in a state of comfort, but they have to engage with these family members who aren't, and they have to engage with the realities that they, they might have
been living in that impoverished state. And so I think with this novella in particular, I found myself engaging with that and trying to think, okay, how do I get this on the page without it being a really depressing story? Mm-hmm. Because romance, [00:20:00] I feel overall needs to be a joyful story. It has room for not joy, but like the story overall needs to leave the reader feeling happy, not like,
wow, that was depressing. So that's, I think the creative challenge that It gives me, but also it, it then allows me to get rid of a lot of things like the, I don't have to, there's not as much like status obsession. There's not as much. Right. The, the commoners, the working class, they didn't have as much of a, an emphasis even on legal marriage.
Mm-hmm. There were a lot of like common law marriages. Mm-hmm. And so, so then you get to like, explore these different. Dynamics of people exploring different communities and, and navigating all of that.
Andrea Jenelle: Yeah, I just, I, you know, that's one of the things that really stands out to me about your writing is that you explore that, and as we talked about a minute ago, just the dynamics of marriage beyond, we're standing [00:21:00] at the altar, what happens after, right?
Katherine Grant: Yeah. Well, yeah, and I think for this story in particular with the suffragette uprising prompt, my first thought was like, okay, so suffragette. I think of that as being an unmarried woman. Mm-hmm. And so she's gonna like, meet a man and they're gonna tame each other in these different ways. And I was just like, I mean, that's a very interesting story, but I also just wasn't, it wasn't speaking to me in a, in that way.
And then when I was like, okay, but what if this is a couple who are happy together, but she shifts how she's orienting to the world and then he has to react to that. Right? Which I think whenever I'm writing a story, I also have questions that I'm hoping it will help me explore. Not really get. Clear answers on, because these are like, you know how they're existential?
Yeah, they're existential questions. But I think I needed to find, to be creatively inspired. I needed to be like, well, what question [00:22:00] am I looking to explore here? And it was, you know, what happens when you are privileged in a certain way, but you see that there are terrible things going on and you feel connected to it.
How connected do you need to feel before you participate? What sacrifices do you make for that? And then also as I started working with it, I was like, this marriage is actually a really good metaphor for how when you're in an entrenched society that has specific dynamics, and it's changing. And so you have to figure out how to renegotiate. And that's Peterloo was all about the working class, speaking up for themselves, trying to say, can we renegotiate this contract?
Like their literal Magna Carta contract, right. And being oppressed because of it. And eventually there was progress, but, but yeah.
Andrea Jenelle: Yeah, so,
Katherine Grant: so metaphorically it worked as well.
Andrea Jenelle: It did. And, and you know, that's what I am really looking forward to is that the, you know, the [00:23:00] stories in this series all explore that in a different way.
Right. Like how and that's why I kind, that's why I'm so glad that like. You interpreted suffrage to mean like, because a, a suffragist isn't someone, they weren't just for women's right to vote, they were for civil liberties period. Right? Yeah. For any and all and most suffragists and suffragettes were believed in fighting for all those other things as well.
Right. Like labor rights and the right to education mm-hmm. Et cetera. So so I'm really glad you explored that because I think
it'll give readers a much better understanding of what the term means. And also understand, as you said, what that means when you are in an entrenched situation and the dynamics change. You know, how connected should you be, how unconnected, how disconnected should you be.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, yeah. Well, and also suffrage, meaning the right to vote, like mm-hmm.
Peterloo was about the working class asking for the right to vote because in Britain at that time, [00:24:00] right, not everyone had the vote. And it took I think until 1891 for all men to have a vote. And then, I think it was before the US but not that far before, that the women got the vote in the United Kingdom.
And yeah, so, so to think about writing about Peterloo was actually kind of a, a mind trip for me if that's the saying because mm-hmm. Like there they were being shut down because they didn't have the freedom to assemble and the presses were being shut down 'cause they didn't have the freedom of speech.
And I kept being like, but these freedoms. And I was like, oh, but this is Britain. They didn't have that. Mm-hmm. This is the tyranny that the Americans overthrew. But people still had to live like that. And it was just, yeah. You know, obviously these were things I knew, but I hadn't lived it with my characters.
Yeah. Yeah.
Andrea Jenelle: Yeah. And, and it, and it kind of like, I mean, it kind of brings home why these things are so important [00:25:00] to Americans too, right? Like, yes. And when we feel there's things being threatened, like why we have the reaction we have, you know why I was like, oh, we need to write this series.
Katherine Grant: Yes, because we currently have the freedom of expression, which means freedom of speech to say what we want and freedom to receive the materials so that romance readers can receive the romance books that they like. Yes. And hopefully by the time this is published, that doesn't change.
Andrea Jenelle: Yes. I wanted this to be like a subversive form of resistance, if that makes sense. And I, I think we're doing that, so that makes me very happy.
Katherine Grant: Yes. And I thank you for leading us in this because this was not on my radar as something that I wanted to write.
And then, like I said, I was on this train and I had this epiphany and then I started doing the research. And research always inspires me too. Yeah, me too. And then when I started writing, these characters just came out like they had been living inside of me and I didn't know it. So on a very personal level, thank you.
And also on a like, you know, [00:26:00] romance community level. Thank you for starting the series.
Andrea Jenelle: Oh, of course.
Katherine Grant: Well. Thank you so much for being my guest host today.
Just to recap, so this series is seven installments. Mm-hmm. Installment one Spine of Steel by Andrea Jenelle is out now on Kindle Unlimited, installment two in the Wide Open Light by Your Truly is out this week on Kindle Unlimited. And then in June, Misty Urban is coming out with Miss Gregoire's beginning in Kindle Unlimited again.
And I've read that one and it is beautiful and wonderful. Yes. So definitely recommend it. And then we have stories from Ramona Elmes Elizabeth Everett, Steffy Smith and Hillary Bow, and coming out later in the year. So just be sure you stay tuned.
Also, we haven't mentioned this yet, but each author got to choose their own title, but many of us drew inspiration from the lyrics, from the musical Suffs, which is all about the US Suffragist [00:27:00] mission.
So it, so listen along to those songs as you're reading the books.
Andrea Jenelle: Absolutely. Yeah. Mine, mine came from that. And I know yours did as well, so Yes.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. Actually, I'll say it in the wide open light is a lyric from Finish the Fight, which is mm-hmm. A song that shows up in the musical at the beginning and at the end.
And it's about how the youngest generation that is picking up the fight for the first time is like, this is the generation we're gonna see it happen. The lesson at the end of the musical is like the fight never ends. And also you might not see what you're fighting for, come to fruition in your generation, but that doesn't mean it's not worth fighting.
And I thought that was really appropriate for this story of Peterloo because 60,000 people showed up to demand reform to parliament, among other things, and they were brutally oppressed. Mm-hmm. And then [00:28:00] they got some parliamentary reform in 1830s and fuller parliamentary form reform in 1890s. And, you know, women didn't get the vote, the right to vote until the 1900s.
So that was a fight that took a long time, but it was still worth doing. And Peterloo was an important moment that people drew inspiration from to continue fighting. So I think that's something that I think about when feeling hopeless.
Andrea Jenelle: Yes. And, and, you know it kind of ties back into our theme, right?
Katherine Grant: Yes.
Well, Andrea, thank you again for being my host.
Of course, Andrea's books are available widely. My books are available widely. Listeners, I'll put links in the show notes so you can find both of our websites and that. Yeah, I'll see you around and let's all read the suffrage Uprising series.
That's it for this week! Don't forget to subscribe to the Historical Romance Sampler [00:29:00] wherever you listen, and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Until next week, happy reading!